This week I have mostly been: Anxious. Trapped in a giant netted cage. Fuelled by iced decaf Americanos Writing essays about being asexual. And wondering whether my toilet had anxiety. There is also that mid section side quest due to goat flashbacks.

In other words, a fairly normal week

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Everything Is Anxiety

On Monday I went to the psychiatrist appointment I had been waiting for. It was fine. Nothing changed other than she thinks I need therapy to help with my anxiety. I can agree with that.

Unfortunately, the appointment suffered from a terrible case of the “Everything Is Anxiety.”

You know the thing doctors do where EVERY bodily sensation, EVERY symptom, EVERY strange thing your body does is, in fact, anxiety. Depression? Anxiety. Hypomania? Anxiety. Irritation? Anxiety. Agitation? Anxiety. Not sleeping? Anxiety. Barrelling around the flat like a feral raccoon because you cannot sit still for more than five minutes because it’s actually painful? STILL ANXIETY.

Maybe my toilet that refused to fill up and flush wasn’t broken. Maybe it also had anxiety. The plumber didn’t actually repair it at all. He simply provided the toilet with some therapy.

“There you go, love,” he said. “We’ve worked through its fear of filling up.”

The toilet has since made a full recovery and is now able to express its feelings in a healthy and productive manner. If only my brain was as easy to fix as my toilet.

I feel mostly fine about the appointment, though. I do, in fact, have anxiety. I recognise that. I just struggle to believe Everything Is Anxiety, because I also struggle to believe anxiety can be this SEVERE. This constant. This unliveable.

When people talk about anxiety, they often describe worrying about things. Mine frequently wakes me up before I’ve even had chance to think about anything. It turns up before consciousness has fully loaded. You cannot worry while unconscious. Yet somehow my Everything is Anxiety manages it.

I actually saw a post on Instagram the other day talking about creatine. Apparently some studies found it substantially reduced anxiety in participants. I didn’t go and investigate the research myself, so I have no idea whether it’s true (Instagram likes to cherry pick science), but I have been taking creatine for ages and have noticed absolutely no difference whatsoever.

Which led me to conclude that there must be different types of Everything Is Anxiety. Somewhere out there is the anxiety that politely responds to coping mechanisms, whole foods, creatine, exercise, supplements, breathing exercises and positive thinking.

Mine appears to be a feral variety. It ignores coping skills. It laughs at routines. It interrupts every distraction I try to use against it. Most days I wake up with it and it simply gets louder as the day goes on. Creatine, instead of helping, tends to give me slightly more energy to be anxious.

The only thing that reliably works is the “dunk your face in really, REALLY cold water” trick. Presumably because when your brain thinks you are drowning, it becomes distracted by the more immediate problem of not drowning. This is apparently called nervous system regulation.

I call it temporarily replacing one problem with a much colder problem. After playing GTA V it also makes me think far too much about whether this would be banned by the Geneva Convention. It does work for around five minutes though. Then Everything Is Anxiety returns and resumes its shift.

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The Iced Americano Obsession

I have been drinking quite a lot of Iced Americanos lately. They are absolutely delicious.

I know I just mentioned my Everything Is Anxiety situation and now I’m talking about drinking lots of coffee, but I swear the two are not linked. They’re decaffeinated, which for some reason tastes even better.

For a while I was really into Iced Biscoff Lattes, but eventually I got bored of them and started to REALLY miss the taste of black coffee. I did briefly wonder if this was an ED thing, but it isn’t. I mean, if I’m not even drinking it for the caffeine, the only reason I’m still drinking it must be because I actually like the taste of it.

It does crack me up sometimes how liking black coffee, salad, kale, rice cakes, or anything with protein is immediately treated as suspicious.

The ED recovery community will quite rightly tell you that no food is morally good or bad, before immediately producing a list of foods that are apparently suspicious.

Rice cakes? Sus.
Salad? Sus.
Kale? Extremely Sus.
A protein bar? Definitely Sus and potentially another ED.
Black coffee? You have been EJECTED.

At some point we seem to have gone from “all foods are allowed” to “all foods are allowed except the ones we’ve collectively decided are punishment foods.”

Have we considered that some people just like these things? Sorry, I don’t like frappuccinos. I never have. I know they’re wildly popular, but they’re just not for me. I like black coffee. Not because it’s low calorie. Not because it’s a punishment. Not because my eating disorder has convinced me that joy is illegal. I like it because it tastes nice.

It’s also been helping me a lot lately because it’s been absolutely baking in my flat. Unfortunately, I can’t even open the windows most days. That’s right, THE MEN are still out there.

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The Men Who Do Unspeakably Loud Things

We still live in a giant netted cage. At this point I can only assume the housing company believes we are some kind of chaotic feral winged creatures that need containing for our own safety.

It has been almost a year. Almost. A. YEAR.

There are men constantly standing outside the windows like mannequins in Debenhams who for some reason have collectively decided that high-vis jackets covered in paint splatters and plaster dust are this season’s must have fashion item.

Then there are the noises. The scratching. The drilling. The banging. The dropping of large metal objects directly outside the bedroom window at 8am. The noises are accompanied by a rotating selection of mysterious smells. One of them was described by my son as, “It smells like when you feed goats with pellets.”

I knew exactly what he meant. My nan’s street had a goat that just seemed to live there despite not belonging to anyone. Took me right back to Billy, the slightly cursed goat that for some reason really hated Sandra at number 30.

Then there are the paint fumes. The housing company helpfully advises us to keep our windows shut while the work is being carried out. Which is lovely advice if you like being baked like a potato. With the windows shut it has been over 30°C in the flat.

Apparently our choices are heatstroke or eau de Billy goat pellets. Neither seems ideal. I genuinely don’t think either of us has had uninterrupted sleep on a weekday for months.

The thing that has surprised me most is how much it has affected me mentally. I can’t really see outside properly. I barely see my pigeon anymore. I can’t sit and stare at the trees. I haven’t been able to see the stars AT ALL the entire time the scaffolding has been up.

Those things sound small, but they aren’t. They’re part of how I decompress. They’re part of my routine. They’re part of how I make a small flat feel less small. Without them, I’ve felt strangely closed in. Trapped. Anxious.

Like the world has shrunk to the size of the scaffolding poles outside my window.

The workers do seem to be trying to finish now. At least I think they are. The housing company told us they would be finished in March. So I have learned not to become emotionally attached to deadlines.

Perhaps one day, hopefully soon, the scaffolding will disappear and I’ll get to see all these lovely things again.

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The Ace Post

Anyway, this was what most of my week entailed: anxiety, living in a cage, and being fuelled by iced decaf Americanos.

I also spent a lot of time working on my previous ace post. It really, REALLY helped me.

It reminded me of how blogging used to help my mental health when I was younger. Not because blogging magically fixes anything, but because it gives me a way to work through feelings while I’m actually experiencing them.

For a little while, I felt more like myself again.

It has also given me quite a bit of motivation to write more posts, which I am incredibly grateful for because motivation has been in rather short supply lately.

You might see more frequent posts from me for a while, depending on how long this particular burst of enthusiasm lasts.

I actually have ideas for posts I’m excited to write. The problem is that my ideas and my skill set are often having completely different conversations.

My brain comes up with these huge, ambitious ideas and then the writing part of me is left standing there going, “That’s lovely, but I have absolutely no idea how we’re supposed to do that”. Not that I am being too self critical, it’s just accurate. I had the same problem with my art, I never thought I would be able to get to the skill level I got to, but my fantastical ideas still FAR OUTWEIGHED my skill level. Still, nobody gets any better by not trying. So I’m trying.

Do any of my fellow bloggers have the same problem? Do you ever have ideas that feel bigger than your current abilities? What do you do when that happens? (Yes I actually want all, and any advice for once).

Anyway, that was my week. How was yours?

I’ve been listening to this song on repeat, it’s from Muse’s new album which I’ve been quite excited about :-